President Donald Trump spent the morning of August 6 insisting the United States holds “massive amounts” of munitions and promising long prison terms for whomever told reporters otherwise.

The pushback follows Reuters and CBS News reports revealing the Army has nearly exhausted its Army Tactical Missile Systems and Precision Strike Missiles after five months of war with Iran, while Patriot interceptors have reportedly plunged from over 2,300 to under 830.

Exact figures are classified, so the public will not settle this argument. But the argument itself is the wrong one.

Whether the magazines are empty or merely thin, the binding constraint is identical: The United States can now fire in a few months what it takes years to build.

That is not a Pentagon problem. It is a manufacturing problem, and no amount of procurement reform will solve it.

The Bargain We Struck in 1991

When the Cold War ended in 1991, Russia was in retreat and China was preoccupied with domestic economic reform. Washington could afford an elegant division of labor: outsource and offshore manufacturing while keeping the high-margin design, finance and branding.

The bet delivered cheap goods and high returns—until it broke. The gamble assumed supply chains would never be weaponized. That assumption is dead.

China is openly pressing for a multipolar order, and the United States has spent two years straining ties with allies whose factories would matter in a long war.

Industrial capacity is no longer an economic preference. It is a strategic reserve.

What Surge Capacity Actually Costs

History is instructive. Under the Defense Production Act of 1950, President Harry Truman forced firms to prioritize military orders and rationed steel, aluminum and copper for Korea. President Dwight Eisenhower used Title III loans and purchase commitments to build domestic titanium processing from nothing.

President Ronald Reagan subsidized radiation-hardened microelectronics and gallium arsenide semiconductors to end foreign dependence on defense components. In March 2020, President Trump invoked the same statute to order General Motors to build ventilators.

Each worked because the underlying capability already existed. GM could pivot because it had plants, tooling and suppliers within driving distance.

The Defense Production Act is a lever, not a factory. Invoked against an industry that has already migrated offshore, it accomplishes nothing.

Reshoring Is Stalling, and the Data Say So

Announcements are not capability- and capacity-building.

Manufacturing construction spending peaked near $238 billion in mid-2024 and has declined since, dragged down by a 44% drop in semiconductor fab construction. Strip out electronics, and spending rose 5.6% after tariffs took effect—about  2.3% in real terms, which is growth, not a boom.

Payrolls have been flat to falling for a year, and Deloitte’s 2026 outlook found executives’ top concern was not tariffs or capital but skilled labor.

Tariffs raise the price of imports. They do not produce machinists or certified welders.

What Washington Keeps Getting Wrong

Legislating protection is far cheaper than financing production, and the two are constantly confused.

Consider the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, advanced unanimously by the Senate Commerce Committee on July 22. The concern is legitimate: Connected vehicles collect data and run foreign-maintained software. But the bill’s 15% ownership threshold sweeps in Mercedes-Benz, whose Chinese shareholders—state-owned BAIC at 9.98% and Geely at 9.69%—hold no board seats and no operational control.

Mercedes employs more than 11,000 Americans, most at a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, plant open since 1997. The committee chairman Ted Cruz warned the threshold would shut the company out of U.S. production and sales.

The executive branch has muddied things further, denying Polestar authorization to sell 2027 models while granting Volvo a waiver: two firms under the same Geely ownership, with no public explanation.

The message to global investors is clear: Doing business in the U.S. now depends on political approval, not just open markets.

If a company is deciding whether to build a $2 billion factory in South Carolina, it now has to worry that a future change in ownership or investor backing could get the plant shut down by regulators. That added risk makes investing in the U.S. significantly harder to justify.

Building the Ecosystem

A dual-use factory base to quickly convert to weapons production requires three things Washington has been unwilling to sustain.

First, demand certainty. No firm adds assembly lines for solid rocket motors, seekers or energetic devices on the strength of a surge that ends with the news cycle. Multiyear procurement and Title III commitments must survive changes of administration.

Second, people. Germany’s apprenticeship system works because employers, schools and states share the cost, and the credential travels. America has the institutions but lacks the wage signal, and young people study what pays.

Third, certification. Certification is the real bottleneck. Increasing production capacity rarely fails because of a lack of raw steel; it stalls because getting defense-grade qualification takes too long. A manufacturing line that can pass defense certification in 18 months instead of five years builds defense capability faster than any tariff ever could.

None of this survives a Congress that agrees dependence on China is dangerous but fights over which district gets the plant.

The Iran war has done the country an unintended favor by exposing the constraint while the stakes remain bounded. A five-month campaign against a mid-sized adversary has drawn down the same interceptors that underwrite deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and air defense over Kyiv. Adversaries impose cost far faster than we replace it.

Missiles can be rebuilt in a few years. Industrial ecosystems take a generation. Begin now, while the lesson is still cheap.